


The Cat Himself Knows

by Anonymous



Category: The Magnus Archives (Podcast)
Genre: Also like a hot mess, Canon-Typical Worms (The Magnus Archives), Cats, Denial of Feelings, Jonathan "Jon" Sims | The Archivist Behaves Like a Cat, M/M, Mutual Pining, post-episode 22
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2021-02-14
Updated: 2021-02-14
Packaged: 2021-03-15 22:27:19
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,727
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29443326
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/
Summary: Martin, living in the archives after Jane Prentiss' attack, adopts a stray cat to keep him company. When his new pet decides to adopt Jon, will it bring the two men closer together, or cause even more problems in their already tense relationship?
Relationships: Martin Blackwood/Jonathan "Jon" Sims | The Archivist
Comments: 1
Kudos: 33
Collections: Anonymous





	The Cat Himself Knows

From the place Jon stands, just under the eave of the portico, he can feel the mist from the falling rain splash off the stairs and up onto his forearms. It’s not an unpleasant sensation. The cold is bracing, helping him shake off the fog from the latest statement.

It had been another of those tricky ones, the kind that only stay properly on the old tape recorder and leave him feeling emptied out and itching – weird circus music and creepy dolls this time. Like something pulled from a bad horror movie. And yet … Never mind.

He’s having his allotted daily cigarette, leaned against one of the wide stone columns that make up the Magnus Institute’s entryway and pretending he isn’t waiting for Martin to return from his lunch break.

Jon’s not sure why this has become a regular part of his day. It’s not like he hasn’t plenty of opportunities to observe Martin during work hours. But those are the times it seems less urgent to keep watch. Jon has always liked to keep an eye on Martin, though he doesn’t particularly want to think of it as a habit.

Initially, he told himself it was because he needed to keep tabs on his work. Martin was the one assistant he hadn’t personally selected, and the research he produced was underwhelming. Well, looking back perhaps it wasn’t the work itself that was suspect. But the citation and cross-referencing had been woefully sub-par. Jon still stands by that.

Things have shifted since Jane Prentiss showed up, though. He’s not watching Martin with a view to critique his work ethic. He’s doing it because he can’t help it. He wants to know, needs to know, that the other man is _safe._ It’s guilt as much as anything. He let some parasite-ridden thing hold Martin hostage for weeks. He isn’t going to let something like that happen again. Not to one of his own.

Now that Martin’s living in the safe haven of the archives, lunch breaks are logically the time he’s in the most danger. Hence Jon’s vigil at the door with the paltry excuse of the cigarette hanging from his fingers. Also, he likes the look he catches on the other man’s face sometimes, coming back from a break with Tim or Sasha – bright and open, even smiling occasionally. It’s a rare, delicate thing that never fails to make Jon’s stomach swoop. 

He curses himself for the ridiculous thought and flicks some ash off the end of his cigarette. He doesn’t _like_ to look at Martin. He doesn’t. He just needs to. It’s all perfectly rational.

It’s been 48 minutes since he left to grab a sandwich, and there’s still no sign of him. Jon’s eyes track the sidewalk in front of the institute, watching pedestrians pass by – city boys in three-piece suits, black umbrellas braced against the wind, students with hoodies up and headphones in to block everything out, an occasional gaggle of lost tourists in garish sweatshirts and bum bags.

From the corner of his eye, he catches a glint of silver. It’s one of the worms, wet and wriggling industriously along the next step down. Jon sneers and steps down to crush it under the heavy heel of his Doc Marten boots. He takes maybe too much joy in the accompanying squish.

He’s adjusted most of his work wardrobe to be passably professional since taking the head archivist position. He’d gotten rid of the piercings and shorn his hair to an acceptable, if never quite tamed, length. But the boots are his little bit of rebellion. They’re hardly ostentatious, but Elias hates them. He always maintains a buttoned-up, oxfords-not-brogues look, and every time he notices Jon’s shoes he makes a face like he’s eaten a lemon. It’s highly entertaining.

Jon’s scanning the area for any sign of more worms when hears a clatter of shoes and sees Martin climbing the stairs. He’s wearing an olive green anorak, hood up and zipped up to his chin. Jon tilts his head to the side, appraising. There’s something off about him today. Something … lumpier. His eyes narrow. Martin’s a large man, sure. Tall and broad in a way that encourages people to ask for help carrying packages and shifting furniture, but he’s not particularly lumpy. If anything, Jon’s thinks, he has the ideal body to stretch out and take a nap on. His chest seems like it would be the perfect combination of soft and firm …

He startles at the vein of his own thoughts, physically shaking himself out of that particular spiral. Forgetting that he’s been skulking behind a column this whole time, Jon calls out on reflex.

“Afternoon, Martin.”

His voice comes out unnecessarily sharp and ominous, but it’s perhaps better than the alternative.

Martin, squawks when he hears his name from nowhere, foot slipping on the slick stair in front of him. He wobbles alarmingly, and Jon steps out from behind his column and claps a hand on his shoulder to steady him, afraid he might decide to go tumbling down. He pulls Martin up under the portico, and then lets go as quickly as he reached out.

“J-Jon,” Martin says, breath coming quick and heavy. “What?”

His hands clutch at the collar of his jacket, and his eyes dart around nervously before finally settling back on Jon. Jon, who has decided to adopt an insouciant pose against his column again. He folds one arm across his chest and takes a nerve-settling drag from his cigarette, blowing the smoke off to the side, away from Martin’s face.

“Um,” Martin says, cheeks pinking. “I didn’t see you. What are you doing out here?”

_Waiting for you,_ Jon definitely does not say. Instead he raises an eyebrow in Martin’s direction and pointedly looks at the cigarette in his hand.

“Oh,” Martin says. “Right. Anyone ever tell you those’ll kill you?”

He laughs nervously after saying it, and Jon rolls his eyes. He’s tried to quit so many times, but stress always ends up breaking his resolve. Besides, a part of him has never really believed he’ll live long enough to have to worry about something as mundane as lung cancer. What does it say about him that he’s much more concerned with being killed by a possessed book or an evil hoard of worms?

“Long lunch?” he asks, eyes roving up and down Martin’s body, in full examination mode. No smile today. He went out by himself, and stayed out later than usual. And the way his eyes keep twitching away from Jon and toward the door suggest something. Guilt? What is Martin feeling guilty about?

“What, are we not allowed lunch breaks anymore?” Martin’s tone shifts to indignant, and he pulls himself up to his full height.

He hardly ever does that, use his height to his advantage. Most of the time Martin goes around hunched, trying to make himself look smaller. Jon’s almost impressed. Standing up straight, however, brings attention to the thing that’s been niggling at the back of Jon’s brain since he first caught sight of him. Martin is lumpier today. Specifically, there’s a lump on his chest, directly beneath his chin, that he’s been trying to disguise with his hunch and his hands.

Clearly noticing the direction of Jon’s gaze, Martin shrinks himself down again and goes into full bustle mode.

“Well, I suppose you’re right, I have been gone for a bit,” he says. “Best get back to the grindstone, eh, boss? I’ll just head down there. You take your time –”

Jon hooks a hand onto Martin’s elbow as he’s turning away and tugs him back. He may pull a little too hard, because suddenly the other man is right there in his space, body just a few inches away, hands clutched with a white-knuckle grip to the collar of his jacket.

“Martin, are you trying to hide something from me?”

Martin’s face is turning from a charming pink to an unflattering red. He opens his mouth to answer and out comes an infuriated “Mrow!”

Or, well, no. Martin’s just gaping. The noise comes from inside his anorak.

“Oh for Christ’s sake,” Martin says, and unzips the top of his jacket. Inside, a tiny brown something claws at his jumper and hisses. “I’m sorry for squashing you, sweetheart. Yes, it was very bad of me.”

He tilts his chin down so that he’s meeting the little creature’s eyes, one large finger stroking from between its eyes up to the cow-licked crown of its head.

They talk between themselves for a few moments, Martin making small tutting noises in response to the animal’s squeaks.

“Were you trying to sneak a cat into the archives?” Jon asks, interrupting the private conversation.

He only wishes he were more surprised. Martin was only in his second week of work under Jon when he let a dog loose in the archives. It had taken the better part of an afternoon to find it and persuade it out of a nest of statements with tidbits from Sasha’s leftover kebab.

“The dog was an accident,” Martin says, clearly reading the direction of Jon’s thoughts.

“And this is better because it’s on purpose?” Jon asks. “The Institute is a place of work, Martin. We don’t allow pets.”

“It’s just for the afternoon,” Martin says. “I’m going to take her to the shelter after work. Only, I found her in the alley behind the chippie, and she looked so lost and pathetic. I couldn’t just leave her there, Jon, drenched to the bone like she was. I mean, look at her.”

He gently detangles the kitten’s claws from the weave of his jumper and turns it to face Jon. It fixes him with an intent stare, giant yellow eyes locking with his. He can’t deny that the little thing looks pathetic. What Jon initially thought was a brown coat is apparently a layer of mud that covers its bony body.

He bends down to study it more closely, and it reaches out one tiny paw and bats him on the nose. Jon forces his mouth into a tight line. He won’t smile. It’ll just encourage Martin to keep bringing in strays.

“Jon?” he prompts, worrying at his bottom lip.

He and the kitten are giving Jon similar wide-eyed, imploring looks. Jon tilts his mouth down forcefully into a frown.

“Just for the afternoon,” he says. “And if it shreds any important paperwork, I’m holding you responsible.”

“Yes, alright, absolutely,” Martin says, the words coming out in a rush. He starts immediately backing away from Jon toward the institute door, as though worried he’ll change his mind if he lingers.

“And Martin?” Jon calls, just as Martin hauls open the heavy wooden door.

“Yes?”

“Don’t go getting attached.”

“Me?” Martin says, quirking a grin in Jon’s direction. “Never. Really not my style.”

Jon watches Martin scramble through the door, clutching the kitten close to his chest, and then turns back to the rain once it’s banged closed. He crushes the stub of his cigarette beneath his heel and runs a hand through his already-mussed hair. Is he becoming a soft touch? And if so, how much does it have to do with Martin’s big, brown eyes?

He curses himself under his breath, and jerks his body harshly around, away from the outside world. Time to descend into the archives again. _Get it together, Sims._ He growls internally. _Fucking pull yourself together._

*

When he makes it safely to the break room in the bowels of the institute, Martin finally divests himself of his raincoat and disentangles the kitten’s claws from his jumper. It’s now caked in slowly drying mud, and Martin hates to think what else, and the kitten is in an even dirtier condition. She squeaks imperiously at him when he sets her down inside the metal basin of the sink and clears it of unwashed mugs.

“Yes, I know you’re hungry darling, but bath first, I think,” he tells her. “The boss really will kill me if you leave muddy paw prints everywhere.”

He’s trying his best not to dwell on how weird Jon’s been acting lately. Really, allowing Martin to bring an animal into the archives is just a culmination of the strangeness that’s been building for weeks. He hasn’t scolded Martin about his reports in ages, and the last time he’d offered to make the man a cup of tea, he’d actually said “Yes, thank you, Martin.” Not unusual from anyone else, but out of Jon it had just sounded wrong. Like a tourist repeating words in a foreign language, but not really comprehending the meaning.

Martin’s tempted to say it’s just because Jon feels sorry for him after everything went down with Prentiss. He knows he’s been a bit of a pathetic, nervous wreck ever since, jumping at shadows and stockpiling corkscrews in every drawer and cubbyhole he can manage. But there’s something else to it.

Surely if it were pity Jon wouldn’t _watch_ him the way he does. He can feel the pressure of those eyes on him the second he enters the archives, a hand on his shoulder, a tickling finger run down his spine. Sometimes he feels an inexplicable heat building at the base of his neck, and when he turns around Jon will be there, silent with his gaze laser-focused on Martin as he refiles a statement or types up notes. And Martin can’t decide whether to be flattered or terrified by the attention.

He can’t deny there’s a part of him that has always wanted to be the center of Jon’s attention. He just thought it would feel more gratifying than this. It ends up being another thing for him to be paranoid about. Is that itching down his back an industrious worm he hadn’t noticed slip down the neck of his shirt, or just Jonathan Sims lurking behind him, gathering ammunition to hand Martin a pink slip? Or for some other opaque purpose?

Maybe that feeling has something to do with why he picked up the kitten. He’d caught the glint of those flash paper eyes as he’d left the restaurant, and been drawn in. She’d been there at the mouth of the alley, head poked out from beneath a half-crumpled cardboard box. When he crouched down to get a better look, he’d recognized the besieged look on her face intimately.

Well, he couldn’t just abandon the poor thing, could he? Not when he knew exactly how she felt.

He adjusts the water temperature to lukewarm, then starts the fill the sink. The kitten rumbles out a protest at the rising water level, backing up to the basin edge as it laps at her paws. She casts a look of displeasure up at Martin, and he has only a second to brace as he reads the intent in her eyes.

The kitten leaps with an indignant yowl up onto Martin’s shoulder, claws digging. He hisses in pain as she flexes them deeper for support then scrabbles upward.

“No, no, no …” Martins scolds, trying to get a hold on the slippery little thing.

Claws to the scalp, he learns the hard way, are deeply unpleasant.

“Oh, come on. Ow!”

It takes a good quarter hour to wrangle her back into the sink, by which point Martin’s forearms are covered in tiny scratches. She looks up at him piteously but pliant as he rinses her off with a spare mug.

“I’m sorry,” he soothes, scratching the knob of her head as he dumps another mug of water over her. “Really I am.”

She takes to being dried a little better, the beginnings of a purr rumbling weakly in her chest as he rubs her down with a tea towel.

He’d thought she was brown when he’d picked her up. Now, clean of mud and city grime, her tortoise shell coloring is revealed. Her coat is primarily black with streaks of orange, brown and cream woven through, and her yellow-gold eyes are set off by a streak of orange down the left side of her face that reminds Martin of nothing so much as a lightening bolt.

“Well, aren’t you a looker,” he croons to her, applying one last vigorous rub with the tea towel.

She meows in a tone that Martin takes as agreement, then butts at his palm with her forehead in a way that makes his heart melt. He scratches, obligingly.

He finds a packet of tuna in the break room fridge to feed her, and once she’s eaten, sets up a little nest made out of a spare jumper on his desk where she seems happy enough to nap while Martin attempts to get some actual work done.

The archive itself is mostly empty today. Sasha and Tim are both out doing statement follow-ups, so it’s just him and Jon. Martin heard him stomp back to his office and forcefully close the door while he was still in the midst of kitten wrangling, and hasn’t heard a peep from him since.

If anything, the company of the cat’s intermittent purring makes it easier for Martin to lose himself in work. The silence that steals over the archives when he’s here on his own can feel both heavy and distracting.

He’s so far in the zone that he doesn’t even notice Jon until there’s a wrap of knuckles on the corner of Martin’s desk and he startles into awareness.

His fingers smash into his keyboard with a clatter and a series of sans serif nonsense, and he looks up to see his boss frowning and, yes, staring at him with that familiar, itchy intensity. _Honestly,_ Martin thinks, _what now?_

“Could you not put a shirt on, Martin?” he says in a clipped tone. “I’m quite sure Elias wouldn’t approve of your state of undress during business hours.”

“Undress?” Martin says.

He looks down at himself, only then remembering. He’d slipped out of his muddy jumper and decided not to replace it after applying iodine to the fresh scratches on his arms. Now he’s just sat at his desk in a thin white undershirt. Maybe he’s starting to feel a little too at home in the archives, because he hadn’t even given it a second thought.

Martin feels the tips of his ears go hot under Jon’s scrutiny, focus somewhere near the center of Martin’s chest. He crosses his arms self-consciously and pulls his shoulders in.

“Sorry,” he says. “I didn’t think.”

Jon sighs and pinches the bridge of his nose.

“Fine,” he says. “Just put some clothes on. I came to tell you I’m heading out.”

Confused, Martin looks down at his watch.

“It’s only 4:30,” he says, dumbly.

He’s honestly not trying to be a scold, he just can’t remember the last time Jon left the Institute before 7.

Jon, for his part, just raises an eyebrow at him.

“Chasing down some primary sources related to the von Closen statement,” he says. “I have an acquaintance at the British Library that might have unearthed something relevant.”

“Right,” Martin says, slowly.

“I’m hardly skiving off, Martin. This is a research excursion.”

“Of course,” Martin says. The awkward tension building between them is now a palpable thing. “Well, good luck then.”

He thinks it’s fair for him to be confused. It’s weird for Jon to say goodbye to him. Usually he’ll just bluster up the stairs and shout back an assignment, if anything, to Martin.

“Um,” Jon says.

“Yes?”

“Just, make sure you dispose of that creature today.”

He gestures with the pointy tip of his chin to the kitten fast asleep on Martin’s desk.

The strained look on Jon’s face, combined with the overly formal turn of phrase and the string of tension still hanging in the air makes Martin snort out a laugh that he immediately tries to cut off.

“Sorry,” he says, trying desperately not to start giggling full out. “It’s just, you know you sound dead ominous when you say it like that, yeah? I mean, do you want her heart in a box like in Snow White? Or am I ok to sacrifice her to the old gods in a tidier way?”

“Really, Martin,” Jon says through clenched teeth.

“I’ll take her to the shelter after I finish work, Jon. I think I can handle that much.”

“Very well,” Jon says, and Martin could swear that his nose tilts up into the air just the tiniest bit as he does. “I’ll see you in the morning.”

He watches Jon until he walks through the stairwell door, then reaches out to give the kitten a scratch under the chin.

She rumbles an interrogatory at him and quirks her head to the side.

“Yeah,” Martin replies with a heavy sigh. “Yeah, he really is.”

The thing is, he did intend to take the kitten to the nearest shelter. He honestly did. It’s just that, after Jon leaves and Martin is really and truly alone in the archives for the day, even that tiny bit of company is nice.

He’s almost sure by this point that whoever designed the Magnus Institute basement did it with a mind to make it purposefully creepy. The hallways feel closed in and the overhead fluorescent lights flicker without warning, somehow managing to cast shadows where shadows shouldn’t really be. The shelves in the large document storage room are arranged to create a warren of twisting pathways that Martin, at least, is always getting lost in.

Somehow, the contented purr of a kitten helps to dispel the shadows from the halls and makes the storage room that Martin has set up as a makeshift bedroom feel less claustrophobic and more cozy than he imagined it could be.

Doesn’t he deserve this? He thinks, once he’s finished with work and settling the kitten down at the foot of his bed. A little company after all this job has put him through? Beset by parasites and undead women? Unable to even go home?

The kitten scrunches her nose up and cycles her paws in sleep. Maybe in her dreams, she's running through a field, hunting something. Martin scratches behind her ears, and she settles. His heart twinges in his chest. He’s not going to the shelter tonight. Maybe he never was. He leaves the little thing to nap, and goes to make them both dinner.

**Author's Note:**

> Title from T.S. Eliot's "The Naming of Cats."


End file.
